


Trust

by rhye



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-17
Updated: 2009-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-26 21:01:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhye/pseuds/rhye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moody knows there's a traitor in the Order and he knows how to find out who it is. (AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trust

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://hh-writersblock.livejournal.com/profile)[**hh_writersblock**](http://hh-writersblock.livejournal.com/) Prompt #3: Shouldn't Have Said That.  
> 

"And then there's 'the traitor'," James Potter laughed, but he was the only one laughing. All eyes slowly swung his way, and Moody leaned forward to the edge of the couch. It sagged under his compact weight.

"Alastor, tell me you didn't slip _Veritaserum_ into his mead." Albus Dumbledore's quiet whisper resounded in the suddenly silent room of Order Headquarters.

Headquarters was a small attached house in Gravesend in the north of Kent. It was attached by tunnel to secured properties with illegal Floo portals, including the wizarding pub Locomotor Lobster, whose owner was sympathetic to well-- to Albus Dumbledore, really, above any political causes. Thus the Order had come to be gathered around a distinctly non-magical fire on this Tuesday night, trying to draw from it some measure of warmth, and drinking copious amounts of mead care of Defoe Wombwell, the owner of Locomotor Lobster. It was into this mead that Alastor Moody seemed to have slipped something without the knowledge of its imbibers.

"Everyone," asked Dumbledore, "Or just Mister Potter, Alastor?"

"Mister Potter and his friends. One of them is a spy."

James laughed. "So you say. You don't know anything about friends, Moody. You're probably so suspicious of people that you wouldn't know how to have a real friend. Friends require _trust_."

Remus Lupin dropped his head into his hand and groaned. Sirius Black was glaring at him venomously.

"Did you have something to add to that, Mister Lupin?" Moody asked.

"Only," Remus looked up, seeming to think about whether he should say what he was thinking, deciding against it, and then opening his mouth and speaking anyway, "You have no real right to interrogate us without our consent. Plus, please don't hold what James says against him. He wouldn't have said that to you if he weren't under the influence, which is, I think, why it's not very nice of you to impose truth upon us."

Sirius' expression quirked slightly. "Not even going to admit it now, eh? Coward," Sirius sighed.

"Excuse me?" Remus turned to him.

"You're a traitor and a coward," Sirius said with more gusto this time.

"Sirius!" James' resounding words carried nothing but rebuke.

"He's never around! And he's got motives, you can't say he hasn't got motives!"

Remus blanched to paper-white and said slowly, carefully, "If you don't know me well enough to know by now that I'm neither a traitor nor a coward, I think our friendship is through, Black." Remus stood to go. "Goodnight, everyone. I'm afraid I've had enough nonsense--"

"And now he runs from confrontation!" Sirius barked.

"Stop being an idiot," James growled back at Sirius. "Let's just clear this up. Moody, I'm not a traitor against myself. Lily?"

Lily, who had been silent and pale all this while nodded and whispered, "I'm not a traitor against James or myself."

"Yeah I'm not a traitor against Lily either!" James added, sealing his loophole.

"I've not said anything I think to be a lie," said Sirius, voice deadly grave and eyes glinting steel at Remus. Sirius too was standing now. "I would never betray my friends."

Remus, however, turned to face Sirius with a look just as stern and hard. "I, too, would not betray James, Lily, or you Sirius, or Wormtail. _You_ never gave names, Sirius. How do we know who your friends are?"

Sirius's chest puffed and he practically yelled when he answered, "James! James is my friend! And Evans since that berk married her, and Wormtail, and you were once, Remus."

"Once." Remus' jaw set.

"Gentleman," Dumbledore intervened at nearly a whisper. "If we can stop yelling for a moment, I think we have nearly hit upon the uncomfortable truth that Alastor was angling for. Mister Pettigrew?"

"Yes?" Peter was shaking slightly, as pale as Lily and crouching into her shadow a bit.

"Where do your loyalties lie?"

"With... with myself? Headmaster?"

"Is that a question?"

"No, headmaster."

"Who are you reporting the movements and plans of the Order of the Phoenix to?"

"Rabastan LeStrange."

The silence was shattered by a hundred muffled voices, whispers, shocked inhalations and exhalations. Remus and Sirius locked eyes across the crowd, too overwhelmed to likewise convey anything other than pure shock.

"Your tactics are unorthodox but effective as usual Alastor," Dumbledore smiled as he bound a stunned and stammering Peter.

The clock chimed midnight. It was now August thirty-first, and Harry's first birthday, and through the cracks in their broken and breaking friendships they knew they would somehow pull this all together again. Because, though they had arguments and wounds, they still had trust, and that was what mattered most in war.


End file.
